Twenty-four hours later, with those words ringing in her ears, Laura dressed carefully and apprehensively for what could turn out to be the biggest meeting of her life. Her wardrobe sparsely consisted of a mixture of working clothes, which she wore to the office where she held down an undemanding but reassuring job three days a week as secretary for an estate agency, and casual clothes, which took the brunt of her work with the horses and showed it. Sensible dark skirts, a few nondescript blouses and then jeans and baggy jumpers. She chose a slim-fitting dark grey skirt, a ribbed grey elbow-length cardigan with tiny pearl buttons down the front and her high black shoes, which escalated her already generously tall height to almost six feet.
Hopefully, this powerful businessman would not be too short. Towering over a diminutive man would do her, she conceded wryly, no favours at all.
Her nerves were in shreds by the time she arrived at the restaurant, alter two hours of monotonous travel during which she’d contemplated the gloomy future lurking ahead of her.
As she anxiously scanned the diners, looking for an appropriately overweight, middle-aged man reeking of wealth, Gabriel, removed to the furthest corner of the room and partially out of her sight behind an arrangement of lush potted plants resting on a marble ledge, watched her.
He had not known what to expect. He had awakened this morning positively bristling with anticipation. Not a sensation he had experienced in quite a while and he had relished it. Money and power, he had long acknowledged, didn’t so much corrupt as they hardened. Having the world at your beck and call produced its own brand of jaded cynicism.
He sat back in his chair, watching her through the thick, rubbery leaves of the plants alongside him, and a slow smile curved his handsome mouth. Seven years and this moment was well worth waiting for. Yes, she had changed. No longer did she have that waist-length hair, which, released, had always been able to turn her from innocent young thing into something altogether more sexy. No, but the blunt, straight, shoulder-length hair suited her. His eyes darkened as they studied the rest of her. The lithe body, the full breasts pushing out the little, prim grey cardigan, the long legs. He felt a surge of violent emotion and deliberately turned away, waiting for her now, with his whisky in one hand.#p#分页标题#e#
He sat back in the chair and swallowed a mouthful, of his drink, mentally following her progress as she was ushered towards his table.
Their eyes met. Brown eyes widening in disbelief clashing with coal-black, thickly fringed ones. Gabriel smiled coldly as she stood in front of him, casting one desperate glance back over her shoulder and then back to him.
‘Gabriel? My God, how are you?’ The residue of shock was still rippling through her body as Laura looked at the spectacularly handsome man lounging in the chair in front of her. She clutched the back of the chair and managed a small, tentative smile.
‘So, Laura, we meet again.’ His hard black eyes raked over her body with casual insolence before returning to her face, and continued to watch her over the rim of his glass as he took another sip of his drink. ‘You seem a little ...disconcerted.’
In fact, she looked as if she might faint at any moment.
‘I wasn’t expecting ...I thought...’ Laura stared back at him, transfixed by his face and those mesmerising black eyes that had always made her feel hot and unsteady. Had it been seven years ago? It seemed like just yesterday. She cleared her throat. ‘When this meeting was arranged, I had no idea...’
‘That you would be coming face to face with me? No, you wouldn’t have.’ Gabriel gave an indolent shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘But I am being very rude. Sit down.’ He watched as she hesitated fractionally, knowing what was going through her head. She didn’t want to be here. If she could have, she would have fled the restaurant as fast as she could. But she couldn’t. She was trapped by her own financial circumstances in a cruel twist of fate that not even he, in his most vengeful moments, could have conceived.
‘Sit,’ he ordered silkily, when she continued to hover by her chair like a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights of a fast-moving car. ‘After all, as old friends we have much to talk about.’ She still had that peculiarly enticing air of innocence and sensuality. Her extreme blondeness in combination with those large, almond-shaped chocolate brown eyes had always been eye-catching because they contrasted so sharply with the contained intelligence on her face. For the first time, Gabriel lowered his eyes as his body treacherously began to respond to her.